September 3rd, 1941 (WEDNESDAY)
FRANCE: The RAF Bomber Command dispatches 140 aircraft to Brest during the night of 3/4 September, but are recalled due to deteriorating weather. However, 53 aircraft failed to receive the signal and continued the mission, bombing the estimated position of German warships through a smoke-screen with little success.
GERMANY: U-225 is laid down. U-593 and U-594 are launched. U-702 is commissioned.
NORWAY: SPITZBERGEN: An Allied task force has robbed the Nazis of their most northerly asset: the Norwegian island of Spitzbergen, 500 miles from the North Pole. The civilian population of 700 has been evacuated and valuable coal mines wrecked.
It was a piquant operation. No Germans were present as an invasion force of Norwegians, Canadians and British landed to take over the radio station. When it was clear that the soldiers were welcome the force commander, from Saskatchewan, made a formal landing from a small commando craft and soon afterwards, at a community centre, was greeted by the commissar (Norway allows the USSR to mine on the island) and handed gifts of Russian cigarettes.
At the Norwegian settlement of Svalbard nearby, a Norwegian major read a proclamation from the exiled King Haakon. For several days the invaders billeted cheerfully with the locals. Before the final evacuation of Norwegians and Russian miners, parties took place and a dance at which Norwegian girls danced with the soldiers.
POLAND: The first
experimental mass killings with gas in Auschwitz.
Since the autumn of 1939 the Germans have used carbon monoxide to kill their
incurable mental patients and other "undesirables." Today Rudolf Hoess,
the commandant here, tried out a new method.
He chose 600 Russian prisoners of war and 250 Jews from the infirmary to be his guinea pigs. Crammed into a cellar, they noticed that the windows had been blocked up. Suddenly the door opened and guards threw in a powder. Cyanide fumes filled the room and soon they were dead. The experiment was later judged a success.
The powder, Zyklon B, is crystalline prussic acid, supplied by a Hamburg firm under licence from the chemical giant IG Farben. It is usually used for killing rats.
U.S.S.R.: Moscow: All Russian men aged 18 or over are called up for military service and cancels all previous deferments.
MEDITERRANEAN SEA: The 6,338 ton Italian motor vessel MV Andrea Gritti, part of a convoy heading from Naples, Italy, to Tripoli, Libya, was torpedoed by British aircraft about 25 nautical miles (46 kilometers) off the coast of Sardinia. The ship blows up and sinks with the loss of 347 men.
CHINA: Chinese forces recapture Foochow from Japan.
U.S.A.: The government negotiates currency stabilization agreements with Mexico, Colombia, and Ecuador.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave the Japanese Ambassador replies to the message and the statement received from the Ambassador on 28 August. In formulating his replies, the President could not overlook the attendant circumstances and developments. Because of these circumstances and developments, the President and his consultants felt that, to ensure any hope of the success of a meeting between the President and the Japanese Prime Minister, the achievement of a prior meeting of minds on basic principles was a necessary condition precedent. Hence, the President in replying expressed a 'desire to collaborate with the Japanese Prime Minister to see whether there could be made effective in practice the program referred to by the Japanese Government in its message of 28 August and whether there could be reached a meeting of minds on fundamental principles which would make practical a meeting such as the Japanese Minister has proposed. . . . At no time, then, or later, did the Government of the United States reject the Japanese proposal for a meeting; it strove hard to bring about a situation which would make the holding of such a meeting beneficial.
In baseball, the New York Yankees clinch the American League flag (third straight) on the earliest date in major league history as the Yankees beat the Boston Red Sox, 6-3.
Heavy cruiser USS Canberra (ex Pittsburgh) is laid down.
ATLANTIC OCEAN: U-567 sinks the Fort Richepanse. U-109 sinks SS Ocean Might in Convoy OS-37. U-107 sinks SS Hollinside and SS Penrose.